“Why should I?” I ask, sitting up. “If I know I feel it, that’s what counts. Don’t you ever look at someone who’s hysterical in public and wonder if it’s because they really feel miserable or because they want others to know they’re miserable? It kind of dilutes the emotion if you display it for the whole world to see. Makes it less pure.”

There were a few things I had in mind to write about and a few photos of recent events that I’d wanted to put up here, but a few days ago, tragedy had struck one of my dearest friends and suddenly, not much else mattered enough to be talked about at this period of time. I’d dropped almost everything just so I could be there for her, even if that meant minimum sleep and taking a half day off from work for the funeral. I can just imagine how her world came to a total standstill in a matter of minutes; throughout the day, it killed me just a little bit more every time I caught a glimpse of her face – she wore a mask of strength, but every few minutes or so, bits of that mask tore away as her face crumbled with all the pain she was trying to keep in.

Last weekend, it was my grandmother’s third death anniversary. I’m not sure whether to say “wow, that was fast” or just to leave it as it is –

The funny (well, not really. More like just the way it is) thing about “time” itself is that it depends on perception. And all the constants in one’s life. For example, time might seem to fly past you because you are juggling so many tasks on hand at one go, while simultaneously time might seem to slow down even when you’re really busy because you have a deadline to meet and Mr. Time decides to be nice to you and make you feel like you have ample time to meet the deadline. Did I make sense? I hope I did, because I’m constantly at war with how time feels to me –

I’m past the grieving stage, at least. I haven’t cried at the thought of her lately, though the gnawing in my chest still hasn’t gone away. I haven’t thought of her much, mostly cos work keeps my life preoccupied but certain things/places/people will still remind me of her. I don’t feel sad each time I see any other old lady I pass by but I still can’t look at them in the eye without thinking how lucky her grandchildren must be to have her. I don’t feel angry anymore that she’s gone, but I still wish I had someone to call Nyai just for one more day.

To put it simply, I just don’t think about it much anymore. I’m not sure if that came with growing numb, or if it was the successful result of forcing my mind not to dwell on it still.

I’ve always thought grieving would happen in stages – and those stages may take years to go through before you have everything coming full circle. But even when you reach that final stage of letting go, after leaping over the painfully high hurdle of acceptance, someone’s death will always be a part of us. We’ll come to a point when we’d barely feel the pain of loss anymore, but we have that gaping hole in our heart as the wound that can’t be healed. I wouldn’t call it a wound of glory like the one a soldier would bring home proudly as a statement of having fought a war, but the wound that death inflicts upon us is a wound that would just remain unhealed; a wound not in your flesh, but in your soul, if you will.

It’s like a scar that will forever mark your skin, or that lipstick stain on the shirt you can’t get rid of – you’ll get past the fact that it’s THERE, but you go through your day with it anyway because it’s best to just move on instead of being stuck in a state of inertia.

If she and my mom were still around, Mothers’ Day today would probably feel like it meant something to me, rather than just one other ordinary day.

To lose someone you love is to alter your life forever. You don’t get over it because ‘it’ is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people but the gap never closes. How could it? The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over it is not made anodyne by death. The hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?

Jeanette Winterson,
Written On The Body

*

I seem to have let this space wither away. Updating sporadically via mobile kinda keeps it alive, but just barely, methinks. Time is of the essence indeed, and it is time itself that I seem to be lacking these days. Or to be more specific, time during which I am productive – I’m shamefully admitting that on the rare days that I have to myself, I choose to just shut myself out from the world, literally draw the curtains of the windows close and just hole up within four walls for the entire day or two.

I hardly even pen any fleeting thoughts down these days; I’d choose to just close my eyes & sleep everything away instead.

How is it that one is able to lose their vigor for life so easily?

Or a better question would be – how does one get back that intensity to wake up in the mornings & LIVE each day to its maximum potential?